


Ritual

by gracethescribbler



Series: Winged Clones [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: CT-7567 | Rex Needs a Hug, Character Study, Clones, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, POV CT-7567 | Rex, Wing Grooming, Wingfic, clone-centric, soft fic, winged clones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 08:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20945669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracethescribbler/pseuds/gracethescribbler
Summary: Set in my new winged clones!verse, a little character study of the clones - Rex specifically - coping after a battle by helping clean each other's wings. Exactly what it says on the tin.





	Ritual

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I came up with this idea a while ago and brainstormed it out with some friends. I'm hoping to set more fics in this little verse as I figure out how it works, but this is just an introductory idea right now, hope you guys like it!
> 
> Thanks to @linwyrms-lair, @skywalking-across-the-galaxy, and @mid-nighttiger (bird expert!) for letting me rant about this idea and then offering some of their own excellent ones to this lil verse.

Rex sat down heavily beside his brothers, in the corner of the barracks where they so often preened their wings or huddled in groups to say their daily remembrances after an especially heavy loss. Today, it would be both - no one had words to say, no one even knew where to start, and it was too much to start off with the names of the dead. So Rex gestured to the nearest brother, a shiny (not so shiny anymore), whose name he thought was Kat. He looked shaken, horrified, his feathers soaked in mud and rainwater and even blood, and he was trembling. Rex knew this was the kid’s first battle - had to be, with the way there was no paint on his armor. “C’mere, kid,” Rex said, quietly, picking up his pack from the floor to dig out the bottle of oil and pair of gloves that he uses for preening. “You’re a mess.”

“I’m fine, sir,” said Kat, shivering, but he looked hopeful, so Rex gestured again, and Kat scooted closer to him and hesitantly extended a wing towards Rex.  _ Gods, _ he was young. They all were, Rex had begun to learn, but these new  _ vode _ coming out of Kamino, even Fives and Echo and their batch, they’d started to seem younger than the first few batches. They’d been slow to admit it, but Rex thought they had all been getting less and less training - shipped out before they really knew what they were doing. This kid still had a few odd juvenile feathers under all the blood.

Rex kept his thoughts to himself as he worked a soft cloth over the worst clumps of mud and blood, careful, and it made him hurt how scared the kid seemed, how easily he flinched. Rex would ask about it later,  _ why, _ but right now he was quiet and steady. The  _ vod’ike _ needed that, he thought, something quiet and safe at the end of a battle.

“Is it- always like this?” Kat said, and he was trying so hard not to sound frightened, but he still did.

“No,” Rex said. It wasn’t a lie. It also wasn’t quite true, because it was like this  _ so much. _ “Today we got unlucky.”

All other days, too, it sometimes felt like. People called them the Republic’s angels, heroes and soldiers and brave, but they were talking in abstracts. When the brothers hit the battlefield and the sky was full of red and green and fire, it was always just them, with no support except their Jedi (not that Rex wasn’t damned grateful for the Jedi). But he knew they weren’t lucky, or special, or heroic - at least, not like he used to think. He and his  _ vode _ did the dirty work for the Republic.

Rex worried, sometimes, how little he felt he had patience for that, anymore.

He set aside his cloth and poured oil into his palm, coated the fingers of his gloves and started smoothing Kat’s grey feathers back into place, combing the ragged feathers’ edges back into streamlined shapes. Kat leaned closer to him, almost involuntarily, although Rex could see he was embarrassed. He wondered if anyone was bothering to teach the cadets how to really take care of each other’s wings, anymore.

“You’ll be fine,” Rex found himself saying, quietly. “We’ll say everyone’s names in a little while, Kat.” There were dozens of other brothers nearby, preening each other’s feathers too, and around the barracks the rest of them had set up to do the same. It helped - the quiet and the safety were always something to look forward too, when they’d come down from the sky and faced the crumpled bodies that had fallen, dead before they hit the ground or otherwise shortly after. Once they were all steady again, then they would grieve properly.

Rex was becoming too familiar with the broken shape of wings on the ground, curled around equally broken bodies. He shook himself, combed his fingers through Kat’s secondaries.

“Sir, I-” Kat stopped himself, then shuddered and his wing briefly jerked away from Rex’s hands. “My batchmate got- real hurt, Captain, they blew his wing off and there was blood and I-” Kat shook his wings a little and rubbed his face, a sick look crossing his features.

“I know, kid,” Rex said. The blood on Kat’s wings made sense, then.

_ Gods, _ it made him want to send the shinies away from the war. Sometimes it even made him want to leave himself. But he was here for this reason, if nothing else - for the  _ vod’ike  _ who had no choice but to be here and needed reassurance. Rex went back to cleaning Kat’s right wing until it looked clean and fresh, like nothing had happened, then nudged his new brother to turn so Rex could do the other wing. Someone - Rex looked back quickly, but it was just Echo - sat beside Rex and nudged him, asked if he could take care of Rex’s wings for him. Rex nodded, relaxed a little bit himself as he continued to work with Kat.

They always had this, after. The support of their  _ vode, _ someone who would watch your back, the safety of ritual. Rex watched his new little brother relax, slowly, and that didn’t seem to pain him less, but it did mean he trusted them. And that was something.

The war wasn’t fair, and they weren’t heroes, and Rex didn’t remember what it was for anymore. But he did know they had their  _ vode, _ had a duty to each other that he always reminded himself of here, when he took care of his men so they’d have their best chance when they inevitably had to fight again.

It wasn’t much.

But it was something.

**Author's Note:**

> Original post for this idea: https://collegefangirl3791.tumblr.com/post/187925849307/clones-with-wings
> 
> Come on my tumblr and we can chat about this idea or basically anything Star Wars!! <3
> 
> Vod'ike: little brothers
> 
> Vode: brothers


End file.
